Makerere University don scoops global award 2017

YUSUF Kiwala, a Makerere University don has beaten off competition from all African Universities to win the prestigious award of the ‘Emerging Economies Doctoral Students Award (EEDSA) for 2017.

Kiwala, a lecturer at the College of Business and Management Science is currently pursuing his doctorate at the Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

He is expected to travel to Seattle, Washington in US in May to be presented with the award at an occasion, where he will also present a paper titled ‘Antecedents and enablers of supply chain value creation: a perspective of SMEs in local procurement.'

EEDSA, was created by the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS), a US - based association of scholars from different high ranking universities.

POMS awards target scholars in operations management or a related discipline offered by a University in a country belonging to Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.

When contacted by The New vision, Kiwala said his winning research paper was on how local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can be integrated into local procurements.

He is the second African Doctoral student to represent Africa at the POMS awards. In the past the awards went to Nigeria, India, Brazil and China.

POMS, created the emerging economies doctoral student award to encourage the development of future scholars in emerging economies and to begin building connections between future scholars.

Kiwala explained that his paper highlighted the need to consider the use of local suppliers to cash in on the government's huge deals.

"The youth who are getting access to the youth fund can be able to repay with ease if they become suppliers to local governments," a visibly excited scholar said.

The move also leads to expansion of local government's tax base. "Many SMEs are informal, not registered and do not pay taxes. If they are to become suppliers, they will be asked to register for withholding taxes hence contributing to the growth of the tax collections in a given area," noted Kiwala.

Kiwala, who formerly worked with the agricultural sector, says small businesses grew when the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) adopted the idea of local procurement.

He, however explains that for the local suppliers to be able to compete with the foreign companies, they require commitment from government.

"To compete for bidding and contracting opportunities, local SMEs will often need to be trained to obtain the required operational, safety, environmental and technical standards," he observed.

This, according to Kiwala, can be done through provision of training, mentoring, identifying opportunities, communication of the business case and incentivize staff to commit to local procurement